Are you seeking a beautiful home situated in the hills overlooking the bay? Well, look no further this spacious home offers lots of potential. The living room is huge with a wood burning fireplace and is along side the family room centered right in the middle of the home. The master has a bath & walk in closet. Outdated features throughout. Close to freeway for a quick commute + much more 2 offer

What does a house with lots of potential and cost ~$1M look like? Well, sure the outside may be a bit frumpy, but let’s go inside and explore the grandeur of this house:

Trust me. You’re not going to find that tile
pattern anywhere else. This is definitely one of a kind. Super RARE!

Don’t they say that everything old is new again? Well, in this case, you’re going to be buying a bleeding edge kitchen!

All those tiles! I’m thinking… very large bathroom! Or… with a few more mirrors, it could be the Mirror Scene from Enter the Dragon!

14 Responses to “spacious home offers lots of potential in Burlingame”

I think this is some sort of post-pomo lit crit, where what appears to be a poorly written and photographed real estate listing is actually a cutting edge film treatment. The story line is deceptively simple and takes place on a former working farm that’s been subdivided into snoozing suburbia. The viewpoint character is the former land owner, now bored out of his mind in the land of tract homes. Furthermore, it’s 1964 and he must hide the love that dare not speak its name. What then happens?

The master has a bath and walk in closet.

Well he won’t be coming out of the closet until 2006, when he’ll refinance the crap out of this place and run off to Key West.

I’m very curios of the background type for the pending buyer of this property. Did they sell a previous home they held for a long time and have $400k to put down on this home, then take out a half million dollar loan to pay off for 30 years. Who wants to work their ass off for 30 years to pay for this outdated POS and throw away that equity/cash they made in their previous home? What makes this worth $1M?

I’m more curious about the story of the sellers, William and Katherine. They bought the place in 1979 for $180,000 before being foreclosed last October for over a million dollars. Where did all of the money go? Hardships? A fantastic retirement? Four children, all of whom went to medical school?

I guess we can’t blame them. After all, with prices doubling every ten years, this place should be worth $1.5M by now… 😉

#6- While it’s totally obvious, and it happens with great prevalence in credit cards, this is a case where debt servicing continues to grow, even if the asset goes up in value.

If we somehow knew, for certain, 100% guaranteed, then the interesting question might be how much should one give up in the present for the future payoff. Basically since we know that prices are going up, and well beyond the cost of capital, giving up all the current cash flow for the future payoff is a good deal, but at what present cost?

Note how this is like credit card debt: Generally the required debt servicing payments go up faster than the person’s cash inflow, but in the case of credit card debt, generally the purchases have no resale value.

If you’re watching this segment of Maury you can see the results of a woman who is 150 million percent positive (~1:40) as to the paternity of her child, and take a look at the results (~6:57)… I’d love to dub in “I knew housing would go up” over her reaction. 150,000,000 percent positive?

Start in 1979 with $180k debt (from #6–100% financing).
End in 2011 with “over a million dollars” in debt (from #6, assume foreclosure amount = debt amount, but who knows).

So the debt went from $180k to “over a million dollars.”

While interest rates have gone down, substantially, since the late ’70s, the debt servicing (P&I, but mainly I) has gone up substantially.

For example:
$180k at 10% = $18k annual interest.
Over a million at 3.6% is still more than twice as much annual interest. (IO loans, for simplicity)

So while interest rates have gone down 64%, the debt servicing (annual interest expense=interest cash flow) has more than doubled (i.e. gone up by more than 3/2 (from 64%^-1, slightly rounded).

Basically the home was used as a credit card/ATM, but the likely expectation was that the cash would never have to be paid back–and my guess is the owner was right about that, lol.

With credit cards there are people who get sucked into running the balance owed up. Basically their expenses are greater than income, and that 20%+ interest does not help, but it’s a quick fix today. As the balances rise, the minimum monthly payments rise, and then at some critical point, the system breaks down.

It’s essentially the same in that the monthly debt servicing is just too much at some point, but in the case of the house, the owner was always told it’s the right thing to do, and besides, when you borrow against a house, the value goes up faster than the interest. And you can always refinance next year–that’s why you take that ARM when rates are at a 50-year point.

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